“He loved her. No one could talk him out of it, Miri. You know that.”
“But we were his mother and father! We should have—!” This time she swallowed the words before they could come out, then violently expelled her breath. “All the saints, give me strength! I cannot bear to hear myself.” She bent forward in the saddle and ran her fingers through her horse’s mane, trying to distract herself. She saw Eolair riding a short distance away, close to them now but not too close. “Everything seems sad or frightening to me today,” she told her husband. “Isgrimnur, John Josua’s birthday, and that mad, rude performance in Hernystir. Hugh treated us like unimportant old relatives. And spending three days with that witch he’s going to marry only made it worse. Demons or no demons, that Tylleth probably killed her husband, you know. People certainly think so.”
“People think many things. Often they are wrong.” This time, Simon’s smile looked a bit foxy. “Perhaps you simply have an aversion to widows.”
She glared, but she knew it was only a jest. “There is Eolair. Ask him to tell you again what he thinks of her. And what Queen Inahwen thinks.”
She said it loudly enough that the Hand of the High Throne looked over to them, his expression carefully empty. “Did you call me, Majesty?”
“You have been riding beside us for a while, good Count,” she said. “I can see you are waiting for us to stop talking.”
“I do not want to trouble Your Majesties or interrupt your conversation.”
“Call it saving us from ourselves, then,” said the king. “Miri and I are both out of sorts. Come, ride here beside us and tell us what’s on your mind.”
Eolair looked at Miri, who nodded. “Very well, then,” he said. “I have had a messenger from Hernysadharc just now. Pasevalles’ dispatch came after we had left, so Hugh sent it on by fast rider.”
“Very kind of him,” said Simon flatly.
Eolair was the last man in Osten Ard to miss something simply because it was unspoken. “Majesties, I still do not know what King Hugh was thinking to keep you waiting at the gate,” he said. “I apologize again on behalf of all my countrymen for such strange, discourteous behavior. Queen Inahwen was surprised and shamed that the king kept you waiting so long outside the walls. She told me so.”
Simon waved his hand. “Inahwen is kind—she always was. I am not too troubled. Men are men, whether king or kitchen worker, as I should know better than anyone. Hugh may be a bit overexcited by his own grandeur, as well as by the prospect of marriage. As for Lady Tylleth . . .” Simon had just noticed the halves of the broken seal that bound the folded papers in Eolair’s hand. “Well, enough of her for now. What does Lord Chancellor Pasevalles have to say?”
“Do you not want to read it yourself, Majesty?”
“I know you too well to think you would have broken that seal if the letter was not addressed to you, good Eolair, and I also know you will have read it carefully and probably more than once, because you are someone who ‘never has time for clean hands,’ as my old taskmistress Rachel the Dragon used to say. So please, tell us what is on Pasevalles’ mind, or at least the things we need to know.”
Miriamele nodded. When they were young, and the fact of their sudden power was like a waking dream, Simon had tried to be all things to all people, unable to refuse a favor or to turn his back on a cry of need. Miriamele, raised in her father’s courts in Meremund and then the Hayholt, had already known that a monarch who could not stand aloof sometimes was a miserable monarch indeed. It had taken years, and the elevation of several old, trusted friends to the most important positions in court, but her too-kind husband had finally learned he could not be all things to all people.
Eolair undid the flattened roll and, as Miriamele had expected, immediately found the first thing he wished to discuss, several pages in: He prepared for any and all of his duties, no matter how small, with the anguished care of a general outnumbered and at bay.
“After much talk about the dedication of the new chapter house and the work on the library—as well as a few other matters I will save for later, like the League’s complaint about Yissola’s latest outrages, as they deem them—the Lord Chancellor gets to the business at hand.” Eolair’s rueful smile pulled his strong, weathered features into a droll face, and Miriamele remembered when she had thought him perhaps the most handsome man in all of Osten Ard. “I do wish our friend Pasevalles could be persuaded to put the most important business at the beginning of the letter, but he still writes like a child of a provincial court, full of flowery greetings and formal phrases even in a dispatch.” Eolair’s eyes widened a little. “Forgive me, Majesties. I did not mean to sound as if I was criticizing the Lord Chancellor. He is an able man and a fine administrator . . .”
Simon laughed. “You need not worry—we know you admire him.”
“Indeed. Your Majesties are lucky to have him, and he will take good care of the Hayholt and Erkynland in your absence.”
“But you were not so certain of that when we made the decision to travel to Rimmersgard, were you?” Simon said. “Come, I am teasing you, old friend. I know you were only doing your duty. It is a difficult thing to take away the king and queen from their court for so long. But we should get back to the business of Pasevalles’s letter.”
“Let me just read this to you,” said Eolair, moving the heavy parchment until he found an appropriate distance from his eyes. “But, my gracious lords and lady, I fear the news from your great southern duchy of Nabban is not so good . . .” he began.
? ? ?
“He can be a bit wordy, our Pasevalles, can’t he?” Simon remarked when Eolair had finished.
“But the essence is clear enough,” said Miriamele. “Duke Saluceris is struggling more than ever with his brother, and Drusis as always is champing at the bit to push the boundaries of Nabban farther out into the Thrithings. And the rest of Nabban, also as usual, is waiting to see which of them wins the contest, as though it were no greater matter than a horse race.”
“Drusis claims that he wants only to protect Nabbanai settlers from raids by the Thrithings-men,” said Eolair. “But that is the substance of the discord, yes, Your Majesty. I will summarize the rest of Pasevalles’ points. He believes the desire to push out into the grasslands is too strong among the houses of Nabban’s Dominiate, and in the country as a whole, for Duke Saluceris to openly forbid his brother these aggressive actions, and he is also not certain that the duke could survive an open struggle with Drusis in any case.”
“Does he truly mean ‘survive’?” asked Miriamele, alarmed for the first time. “Surely these are mere disagreements. The Benidrivine House is the house of Camaris the Hero himself, and Saluceris is the lawful duke of Nabban, not just by their own laws, but under our Ward. By the love of the saints, Simon and I crowned Saluceris ourselves in the Sancellan Aedonitis, in front of God and all Nabban!”
“All true,” said Eolair. “And I do not imagine Drusis would move directly against his brother and flout so much law and custom. But assassination, if it could not be directly laid at Drusis’s door, would still make him the next duke, since Saluceris’ son is still a child. I hate to say so, but as Your Majesties know, murder has long been a favored method of gaining power in the south.”
Simon made a frustrated noise. “Well, this is a puzzle and no mistake. But what can Miri and I do? It would be heavy-handed to send troops to Saluceris when he has not asked for such a thing.” He looked around at the column of armored men marching behind them and the vanguard of mounted knights. “Not that we have any troops to spare just now, with the planting season hard upon us. Maybe Duke Osric is right when he says we need a larger standing force . . .”
After the king had paused long enough that it was clear he had finished his thought, Count Eolair gracefully took charge of the conversation once more. “Let me be clear, Majesties. Lord Pasevalles does not ask you for a solution at this moment, but merely wishes you to know what the news from Nabban tells him, so that any change will not come as a complete surprise.”
“In other words,” said Miriamele, “he wishes us to share his worry and his helplessness.”
Eolair frowned just the smallest bit. “I’m afraid that is often a loyal subject’s duty in such cases, my queen.”
Miri knew she was being unduly cross, but the sun and the spring scents she had hoped to enjoy were fading beneath all these fretful shadows of statecraft.